Motion capture may be used to track movement of a real-world object to which a computer model may be mapped to produce animation that accurately imitates real-world movement. Further, motion capture may allow movement for animation to be produced in a quick manner relative to frame-by-frame animation. The quick production time may permit an animation director to experiment with different movements or perspectives before mapping the movement to computer models, which may result in more flexible animation production.
Typical motion-capture setups include multiple cameras that detect one or more objects (e.g., people that are fitted with markers) in a scene. In many cases, the motion-capture cameras are provided with filters to increase the signal-to-noise ratio of the image detected by the cameras in order to more easily identify markers. Further, a motion-capture setup may include one or more cameras that do not include a filter in order to provide a normal view of the scene. Throughout a motion-capture session, it may be beneficial to review the view with the markers as well as the normal view in order to verify that the tracked movement of the markers corresponds to actual movement of the objects in the scene.
However, the cameras that produce the different views may not be calibrated. In other words, the cameras may not be adjusted so that each of the cameras shares a collective mapping of camera parameters (e.g., a shared camera matrix). Operating the cameras that are not calibrated may result in playback and review that is labor intensive and inaccurate. This makes for inefficient use of time during a motion-capture session, which may result in increased production costs. On the other hand, individually calibrating the cameras may produce playback that may be reviewed more quickly, but the calibration process itself may be long and labor intensive. Further, in some cases, cameras may be in hard-to-access locations which may make camera calibration difficult to perform. Moreover, calibration may have to take place frequently because the cameras may become out of focus due to changes in temperature and vibrations produced over the course of a motion-capture session. As such, problems associated with long calibration times may be magnified by the fact that the cameras have to be repeatedly calibrated.